Of y’day a friend wrote: Problematic protesting with SODEM today. Before I arrived, Steve had been moved away from the usual area by the gates to Parliament and we found him around the corner. A short walk took us to Horseguards, around the back of No.10. Apparently Steve could be heard as Johnson spoke in PMQs! Another little stroll took us to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FoCaDOff) for a little shout and a playing of some inspiring music (including national anthems of both Russia and the USA). One minister Cleverly tried to get out past Steve; as usual he failed. Then, off to the Cabinet Office for more of the same and then on to Downing St.. This was when the police finally caught up with us to object to our using the right to peacefully protest. We were all wearing masks and socially distanced, and of course we were not an organised protest but simply individuals who who occasionally interacted in groups of two. This ‘government’ is trying to avoid protests using Covid 19 as a pretext. One way or another, our Covid-secure protests will continue. Next week perhaps there will be a series of people taking exercise by walking past government centres and just happening to carry placards & flags. Or something else. We are not going away.
Schools Week has reported that the Govt has advised schools to stockpile long-life foods, frozen foods, as supplies of food can’t be guaranteed as they are now in the event of a No Deal. This is similar to advice given in 2019 but has reprised as No Deal approaches. Incredible, mind-blowing, and yet it’s not headline news. It’s there, right there in plain sight, this Govt would plan to risk the ability of children to be fed – notwithstanding their Dickensian and then spineless take on free school meals – in the event of a deal they’ve failed to negotiate. Putrid that they’d hold the poorest children hostage in this way, but there they go. This is the crunch week for any deal with the EU to be reached.
It’s also the week that the Far East and Australia have all signed up to a free trade zone, again signifying this is how the world has gone and will continue to go, with psycho little UK, nay England, all alone in its WTO enterprise. I’ve spoken with Leavers who want No Deal ‘because then we’ll get a better deal’, who want no deal ‘because there was no deal on the referendum ballot’, who want no deal because ‘it’ll be fine, WTO all the way’, and who want no deal because they can see the damage it’ll inflict but take pleasure in the prospect – the last being a far-right lorry driver who blames foreigners for cutting driver wages (he may have a point) but doesn’t see no deal or even the deal we get as responsible for demolishing trade and thereby a need for hauliers, that Kent is to become a hauliers’ toilet, and then only a fraction of hauliers will have permits to get to Europe anyway.
The hauliers association has spoken out against Brexit. Fishermen are now apprised that 40% of crews are foreigners but the new points system doesn’t accommodate such crews, as well as most UK catch, shellfish and the like, goes to Europe, whereupon if it doesn’t face clearance delays due to no deal causing all the food to rot, will face customs delays anyway, and tariffs.
Sheep farmers have warned, been warned, lamb prices will collapse. To which environment secretary Eustice says they can diversify into beef. It’s sickeningly terrifyingly unbelievable.
We’d had a few days of respite: Biden won the US election, Cummings appeared to be leaving Downing St, even Laurence Fox lost his agent (lol). But Trump’s refusal not just to concede, which is a matter of semantics and custom, while every case to investigate alleged voter fraud has lost within minutes, is now following with changing all the old guard at the Dept of Defense, and moving to reduce the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan to 2,500 each, something previous DoD chiefs had resisted but no longer, although they had reputedly stymied an attack on Iran’s facilities. So Trump on his way out is maxing out the damage and chaos he can leave for Biden, while the ‘Proud Boys’ and other tooled up psychos go out looking for martyrdom or victimhood in the name of shooting antifa armed with placards and skateboards.
Cummings meanwhile doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere except into hiding as has Johnson who’s now ‘isolating’ thanks to having met Covid + MPs (although Johnson’s also had Covid already? Eh?)
And the stark reality from Biden that a No Deal Brexit, which is as much of an assault on the Good Friday Agreement as the Internal Markets bill bid to allow laws to be broken, will confirm no deal with the US. The irony is that, for all the bluster of the Brexiters that Brexit was about liberating the UK, the country would strut the globe, a colossus of sovereign autonomy, in fact the success of Brexit depended on a US deal contingent on a sympathetic US president , i.e the lawless Donald Trump who was only ever AMERICA FIRST anyway. The whole thing absolutely stank from the outset. Sadly, while the Battle of America has seen a massive, crucial win for the decent folk, the Battle of Britain remains very lost and we will become as divided, culturally, politically, as states as well, and as isolated as a pariah, as North Korea. loyalties noted, freedom of movement removed. Utter fucking repulsive double-speak shambles.
Us meanwhile, today, a nice turnout, although we couldn’t put the banners up – I got there at 1130 ish and found the crew skulking in a side road, having been told by police they couldn’t protest – which is rubbish, it’s about organised protests over a certain size whereas now it’s any protest at all. We’re truly living in a fascist state. One of ours was telling me about the rise in mental health cases at her foodbank – yes, this is going to go through the roof when we have whatever the fuck Brexit, on top of failures to get supplies in already through Felixstowe, let alone the lorry park – lack of customs’ officers epic bullshit that we’re going to get anyway (lord lilley was lying about that one) – and lockdown, and Christmas coming up just to max out the pressures and the misery – that’ll all befall us come the turn of the year. Jeez, it’s difficult to protest even among ourselves.
As it stood this morning, nothing was resolved, and it seemed it was all around Nevada that the world revolved. Any and every straw being clutched at.
From: M> Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 5:11 AM To: Robin Tudge <xxx@xxx.com> Subject: I’m nervous
That is all. I know the rest of the world is, as well, but WTF is wrong with my country? It is looking possible that it could be a tie, if not a full on loss. Fuck.
On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 9:02 AM Robin Tudge xxx@blah.com> wrote: Was just thinking of you when I saw Biden pull ahead in Wisconsin….We’re nervous too. Was outside Parliament with our usual gang today (we are thee every Wednesday to yell at Johnson), last protest in a while due to lockdown. Biden would be a brake on the far right shitshow over here, and if Trump loses he’ll call shootings anyway.At least the Belorussians and Polish know how to protest. Chin up it is not over yet.
From: M> Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 5:59 PM To: Robin Tudge <xxx@com> Subject: Re: I’m nervous Hello! Yes, the Wisconsin lead is making me feel momentarily better (I mean, yes, but WTF that this is all so close and that in this state, where a sizable lead was expected, it is in recount territory)? And Michigan and Nevada are very possible, with Pennsylvania a slightly longer shot. You could not have told me in 1998 that things could get this bad. WTF, world? M
2000 when things were first torpedoed with GWBush stealing the election, I thought then these people are capable of anything. Then a few years’ respite of sorts with Obama, then Trumpkin. It’s this ‘culture war’ though that’s being fought over here as well, with Farage this demonic figure on the sideline, scratching at the 3% margin the Tories need to stay in power, so they respond to his far-right babbling, and it is, his ‘Reform Party’ (dumped the Brexit Party monicker as if to sociopathically-distance himself from Brexit) is now all about anti-masks, anti-lockdowns, due to the constraint on freedom of movement and economic damage (both of which were well worthy sacrifices under his Brexit plan, oddly). Nasty little pervert spent the summer lurking in sand dunes, watching children drown, then flies State-side in breach of lockdown to suck Trump off in front of a crowd of thousands of Righties and a trillion Covid pathogens. No he’s not all powerful but he has a weird mass following on YouTube spanning the globe, most of his work isn’t in the mainstream media like so many of these people on the far-right, it’s all talk-radio, Telegram, 8Chan, YouTube bullshit, it’s all so siloed viewers become hot-housed, while people like us, who don’t watch this poison, are largely oblivious to it. This is what Brexit’s thrown up, Brexit itself being the first phase in the Culture War they started, is the morass of really fucked up bastards who’ve come to the fore, and the web of interests interlinked. It’s profoundly disturbing, serious money and power in the hands of awful people, who lie to and stir up the working class to act as boot boys on anyone who disagrees with them (this is what democrayc is to them, you agree or you’re a lefty traitor and should leave the country). What I found amazing was watching bots and trolls on FB nd Twitter wind up, warp, deceive, and demoralise people during the Brexit hell, and yet they weren’t real, I had to keep telling people, you’re under attack from bots and trolls designed to drain your energy and make you sick with anger. In lieu of actual social interaction everyone carries around these portals of poison in their pockets, and only look up to film Karens kicking off. Again that’s not wholly true at all, but if one wanted to despair, then … Maybe it all went wrong after the USSR collapsed, I mean they were the bad guys (notwithstanding episodes like the USAF dropping more bombs on a fifth-world country like Vietnam than all were dropped in WWII on Nazis and imperialist Japanese), but then the Cold War ended and it was supposed to be about the people all over again, no more war, no more nukes, but the Right wing and the far-right whose ambitions had actually been kept in check by the Soviets’ existence and the moral mirroring and powerplays that they could bring to bear, all that was gone, there was no-one to stop the extremist capitalists raising global Hell and off they went. Happier times such as 1998 one has dreams about, then you wake up and realise ‘ah fuck, another day in Hell’. 😄 Yours sincerely, Robin Tudge @robintudge See my page Old Alleynians Against Fascists and Farage www.facebook.com/oaaffs
I clutched later that day.
CNN, ever the optimist, says in Pennsylvania there’s about 750,000 votes left to count. Mail in votes that the NYT has estimated favour Biden 3 to 1, which should divvy up suffice for Biden to overcome the 164,000 lead Trump currently has on him (Trump + 160k, Biden + 490k) by approx 190k votes. If, if, if …
Arizona was close, with 88% reported giving Biden a 68,000 lead out of 2.8 million. Biden has incdiently received more votes than any other presidential candidate or incumbent in US history. Well, an irony CNN pointed out: AZ is normally a red state, a given, it doesn’t point to who’ll win overall, it just votes Republican, having done so in every election since 1948 except for Clinton in 1996, and that was because Perot stole Dole’s commanding margin. So why dump the Trump? Because Trump spent so much time slagging off John McCain, when he was live, and even after he was dead, and Arizona didn’t take kindly to that. So, ‘backatcha’, Dumpster.
As the day wore on, job after job, I had a good crewmate who was as into this as I, and she spent many waking moments lookign for updtaes that weren’t forthcoming due to the time difference. By day’s end I was morose:
This is the strangest thing: the US as a country, as a world power, has done great good, but also great evil. Its system of Govt is something to marvel at in its inception and idealism, checks and balances, but also something to abhor for its corruption. Incredible beauty against astounding, embedded violence, a land of Dreams where anyone can be king, but a plutocratic ziggurat of nightmares where some hate others with psychopathic zeal simply because of they’re a different colour.For all that we’re faced with a cliff-edge of suspense in case one elderly white male should fail to stop a demented shit-gibbon get four more years – not that Trump actually got to do much structural damage, really, he was held in check by cleverer people than he, but was given the torch by far-right billionaires and their anti-social media whores to light a Culture War that’ll take years to snuff out. Were we in a parallel universe all this time? Was social media really so incredibly much to blame in its role in dividing the US and destroying the UK? Are we correct, or do Trump supporters see and understand things we don’t? Genuinely, is there something we missed? And yet for all that conflict of cynicism, it’s not fear I necessarily feel right now, though we see pickups of gun-toting flag wavers, no different to ISIS brigades, raiding ballot stations … but real sadness. That it should come to this. That such a land of immense potential and achievement – all other great evils notwithstanding – traduced to this…
For us over here, we had our Wednesday outside Parliament. I’d not heard the opening to ‘food glorious food’ and yet it played outside the Foreign office arch through which Johnson’s cavalcade slew (good spot Steve! We wondered which route the PM would take and were on the money!) where we got a good yelling at him. Lo was there, Ni, Geordie, Danny, it was a lovely day. Opposite us we had the Belorussians, on the corner diagonally opposite we had a large group from Armenia protesting the war. Gavin wasn’t there but we had a late showing from the one with serious obesity and what’s almost Parkinsons, telling us about how he was beaten up by police for protecting an old woman at an anti-mark rally, ‘something none of you fucking losers would ever do!’ he said, staggering out into the traffic. I got bogged down with a rightie who took umbrage at the ‘far-right’ quote in my ‘Tories: lawless far-right criminal scum’ (I have to say I was calling them scum weeks before Rayner said it, maybe I’d inspired her!). Anyway he was unimpressed with that, (and only that), looking for proof the Tories are far-right. The usual whattaboutery, ‘Corbyn’s anti-semitic, why not have a go at that?’ when this guy isn’t doing anything, Corbyn’s been busted, he’s not even in office, and of course he voted leave, ‘after the European court stopped us deporting a rapist who then went and raped someone else’, which he didn’t cite but I think he mwant the ECHR, which we’ve not left and won’t. He seemed to admit the referendum was based on lies but said all politicians were liars, yet we had to respect the result and the 2019 GE result that ‘destroyed the lefty do-gooder human rights pro-immigration lot’ – odd because he’d said he wasn’t racist and didn’t like that everyone like him gets called racist, and cited Gemima Beggam as bad immigratoin, even though she’s British, ‘but her parents were Bangleadeshi’, which by his count was irrelevant because she was old enough to know being an ISIS terrorists was a bad thing. Cracks all over his argument. Labour are friends of Hamaz, pro IRA, ‘traitors’. I asked him why he wore an English flag pin and not a Union flag, he said only he felt English and British wasn’t a thing for him… but you voted Tory, the Conservative and Unionist party. He had a go at the LIb Dems for seeking to overturn a democratic vote, which he’d already admitted was based on lies and lawbreaking, therefore wasn’t democratic. Round and round we went til I got bored and walked off. Red hate Max was also on scene, being very tedious.
But this might be our last protest for a while – Lockdown II starts tomorrow, Covid’s back in style, and Patel was laying down laws today about limiting protest to two people – something nicely far-right for you, authoritarian, what have you. We were moved on by police on pain of a fine. They’re getting very gittish.
Another diseased entity to return is Farage, an dhis cock-sucking sidekick Tice, as the ‘Reform Party’ (socially distancing themselves from their Brexit), bent on breaking lockdown. There are indeed two anti-lockdown events tomorrow Thursday in Trafalgar Square, at 2pm and 6pm, and as noted the far-right are well in attendance with these events, as well as Qanon and all that stuff, the Venn of Brexit, far-right, anti-mask, Covid ‘s a conspiracy, all meshes together, an a broad umbrella or coalition of nasty people and fuckwits. So of course Farage, fresh back from the US where he publicly splayed his arsehole for Trump to fuck (breaking travel restrictions by claiming he’s a journalist) has seized on this and all things anti-preventative measures on Covid is the Reform Party’s caper. That he’s helping to kill off more people is apparently not a concern.
It’s just gone 6pm UK time. Wisconsin has just, it seems, fallen to Biden, 10 electoral college votes, with a margin of just over 10,000 votes, which would put him on 234. It looks as if he may take Michigan with an equally thin margin, may, we say may. Arizona is already his, and, if he takes Pennsylvania, which the NYTimes says he can if postal votes follow the trend, he has 270. Pennsylvania looked like it was solidly Trump’s, but that’s not accounted for postal votes that Trump duly loathes so much, and he’s already declared: either he wins, or it’s fraud, exactly like Citizen Kane.
It’s been marked by numerous surges. In the last few weeks, Biden led the polls, and by greater margins in the key swing states than Hillary in 2016, who won the popular vote by a 3 million margin but still lost the electoral college (losing Wisconsin for example by 23,000 votes, ‘a dozen churches’, commented one pastor who noted it wasn’t a turnout for Trump but a fall in the black vote following a tidal wave of memes demoralising black voters’ support for Clinton and urging them not to bother). Biden also seemed to do very well with early voting, which this year has been record-breaking, and we saw queues of voters a month ago already out – determined not to be beaten by closed polling stations or Covid messing things up.
But on the night the Trump vote turned out, and turned out big. I didn’t watch the election overnight, and even this morning work to find both Trump and Biden were miles from being able to declare. This didn’t stop Trump stating he’d won, having taken Florida, always a state to worry about. Facebook was full of woe all day. No-one could take it in, how could the Trumpkin win again, when every poll said he was trailing.
Now though as Wednesday’s dragged on, the postal votes, and absentee votes are coming in and they’re looking good for Biden (and hence Trump has hated them all along).
But we still won’t know the final results for a while, maybe days, maybe longer. There’s still scope for true violence to break out.
Not sure how there can be such discrepancies, (Johnson said it wasn’t up to the UK to comment on others’ elections when prompted by Starmer to assert that all votes must be counted (and not stopped by Trump as he’d demanded) … but the CNN headline if true made me suddenly hopeful.
robintudge 